Ron nodded his head approvingly and remained silent, hoping that Victor would go on.
Victor went on: “The issue for me is to try and understand the process which allows those men with violent temperaments to identify and tame their instincts.”
He paused, conscious that he sounded rather like his schoolmaster father.
“I can’t believe for an instant that all this could interest you,” he added. “I don’t see how I could be of any help at all in identifying your potential terrorists.”
Ron smiled and, a little condescendingly, thought Victor, explained that he had already well understood this and that he actually had something else in mind. Of course Victor couldn’t profile the psychological features which might lead to the identification of a future terrorist. The best minds in the brain business had virtually given up trying to do this. It was a waste of “time and budget,” said Ron. But it was at least as important for the “service” to understand how one might rule out certain individuals as budding terrorists.
“How’s that?” asked Victor.
“Well,” said Ron, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial level. “At any moment, we keep track of a few hundred dodgy characters and from time to time have an informal ‘chat’ with them and ask a few questions. ‘Have a good holiday in Afghanistan?’ and that sort of thing. And since they haven’t done anything prosecutable, that’s about as far as we get. But the number of suspects doesn’t diminish—on the contrary—and we can hardly keep up with the job. So, if we could rule some out as potential future killers, for example, that would be great progress. You get my drift?”
Do I want to help this character, Victor asked himself? And if I did, what could I possibly tell him? Is he any more ready to accept the idea of objective men than anyone else? Up till now, all I’ve met with is instant denial. “Impossible,” they all say, without a moment’s reflection. Well, at least he’s paid to listen. If he dismisses my views out of hand, that’s just tough for him.
Victor took a deep breath. “Look Ron,” he said, using the man’s name for the first time to encourage his patience and sympathy. “It’s true that I’ve been thinking a lot about what intellectual conditions allow hatred to turn to violence and murderous acts, setting aside those of the mentally ill, you understand.”
Ron nodded again, bringing his chair closer to the table.
“It seems to me that a key factor is the level of consciousness of the individuals in question. The extent to which they are aware of their own selves and, by extension, the selves of others. The extent to which they have examined and understand their own thoughts and their emotions, and thus have some idea of the thoughts and emotions of others. Wouldn’t you agree, for example, that a man with a developed sense of empathy, an understanding of another’s feelings, would be highly unlikely to plant a bomb in a bus which would blow up other people, perhaps whole families?”
Victor paused to see if Ron was with him so far. Ron nodded solemnly.
“To tell the truth, when I’ve thought about these things, I’ve rather thought to apply them to our historical mass murderers, not today’s terrorists. But now that you give me occasion, I think they extend with ease to this category of killer too.”
Harry, who at one moment had taken a walk, apparently from boredom, but was now seated again at the table, said to Victor: “Tell him the subjective and objective stuff.”
“I was coming to it. It’s all part of the same idea. For me, all men lie in their mental configuration somewhere on a scale from total subjectivity to complete objectivity.” He saw Ron frown and said quickly:
“Bear with me. There are men who appear to have no capacity for objectivity at all. This faculty is virtually absent from their personalities. They have only one perspective on life—their own. They could as well be prime ministers, dictators, bartenders or plumbers, and be stupid or highly intelligent. These are not important distinctions. But these men live only through the externalization, for want of a better word, of what they have become. They are incapable of critical self-judgment, have little or no time or patience to understand or sympathize with the perspectives and opinions of others, would have trouble describing with any accuracy their own personalities, and most certainly lie to themselves. Lacking as they do this self-awareness, they are most likely to lie to the others as well and to cheat their way through life in one way or another. And isn’t most, if not all, evil based on falsehoods, lies?”
Ron placed a hand on Victor’s arm to halt him in his flow. “These are my terrorists, aren’t they?”
Victor thought for a moment. “Let’s at least say that most if not all of those who kill innocent people indiscriminately in the name of an ideology or religion would share these characteristics. At the same time, your mother or sister might have such a wholly subjective personality as well and be a very sweet and docile person. So it doesn’t help you much.”
“Tell me a little more about these subjective personalities, as you call them,” said Ron.
“All right. Take an extreme example familiar to all of us. As I told Yorick …
“Yorick?”
“His parrot,” added Harry helpfully.
Avoiding Ron’s regard, Victor went on:
“The most known and extreme subjective case is probably Hitler. I’ve studied him a bit. Hitler’s mind and psychiatric condition have been analyzed endlessly, were even analyzed by the Americans during the war itself. His origins and childhood have been examined, showing, for example, that his father was half-Jewish—or at least that he thought it so—and died of syphilis and that Hitler blamed his recurrent lifelong illnesses on this, with the results we all know. Well maybe it’s so, maybe not. It’s true he called syphilis the “Jewish disease” in Mein Kampf. It’s true also that most of the common psychiatric symptoms, paranoia, narcissism, anxiety, depression, hypochondria and so on, have all been associated with his personality—as indeed they could be with most of us.
“Speak for yourself,” said Harry, whose attention had wandered into their conversation again. “And what about his testicles? He was missing a ball, wasn’t he? Like Franco.”
Victor smiled and chose to ignore Harry. “In other words, we’re not really any closer to knowing anything about why he turned to the most brutal crime on an incredible scale. The last major psychiatric study on him even concluded that what was really missing was access to information on his ‘toilet training’ and eating habits as a child.”
They all chuckled.
“So, what can you add, then, to this analysis of Adolf?” enquired Ron.
“For me, he was the personification of absolute subjectivity,” said Victor. “Again like most of us, he had his misfortunes, his childhood unhappinesses perhaps, his prejudices, his dislikes, his hatreds, but unlike the rest of us, he sought with extreme violence to eliminate those he held responsible for his woes. He couldn’t ever see the other man’s point of view; he hadn’t the slightest, minimal respect for other people’s lives and perspectives; he couldn’t identify within himself the senselessness of his anti-semitism, for example, or his racial bigotry; he couldn’t oppose reason to his delirious repugnance for so much and so many; he couldn’t argue with his murderous instincts. A psychopath if you like. But that’s a rather vague notion which doesn’t help us a whole lot and in any case doesn’t identify the cause of his behavior, only its symptoms.”
“Let me get a handle on this,” intervened Ron. “What you’re suggesting is that a man who on the other hand has a reasonable level of objectivity about himself, his emotions and his ideas, however abject, couldn’t, or rather wouldn’t, set out in this way to inflict them through violence on other people. Is that it?”
“Yes,” said Victor, “that’s the general drift. Think of your own murderous instincts—I guess that you have some, like most of us. You are aware of them and you put them in perspective, don’t act on them. You may hate Christians or capitalists or politicians or bar pianists or whatever, but you li
ve with your thoughts and leave it at that.”
Ron sighed and stared in front of him.
“How can this help us, though?” he said after a few minutes.
“I’ve no idea at all,” said Victor. “This conversation wasn’t my initiative, after all. All I’m guessing is that if there were a means of establishing a man’s objectivity and one found that it was rather pronounced, one might possibly be able to conclude that there was a reduced risk that he might engage in violence.”
“Let’s take that hypothesis,” said Ron. “But supposing our suspect was a consummate liar. How could you then tell one way or another his subjectivity or objectivity?”
Victor thought for a moment. “I would say that it’s quite easy to lie about what you know but rather hard to lie about what you don’t know and haven’t thought about. Maybe that’s the key. In other words, one should not question a suspect about his knowledge of, and relation to, the matter in hand, a planned crime, for example, or his movements and his acquaintances, but seek simply, in the first instance, to establish what he knows, say, about himself, whether he hates anyone, or is envious, jealous, vengeful, for example. Whether he understands remorse or the notion of pardon. An objective man, or a man who has developed an objective faculty to a significant degree, is able to describe himself to a certain extent, to recount his character, his ideas, his emotions, as lucidly as though he were describing some one else. He would understand his weaknesses and strengths, for example.”
“Surely that’s not possible?” said Ron. “Aren’t we all subjective?”
Back to square one, thought Victor sadly.
“To a greater or lesser extent, yes, most men have in them both the subjective and objective. But it’s all a question of degree. Leaving other people aside, think about yourself. What are you—fortyish?”
“Forty-five,” said Ron.
“Right. Wouldn’t you say that today you are much more objective about yourself than at twenty? Or maybe even at thirty? That you have a much clearer idea now than then of the fundamental features of your personality? That you know better now what you don’t know, for example? That you glimpse, at the very least, what you would consider good in you and what you would consider to be your vices, your more unsavory characteristics? That you understand now that you are a jealous man or a man given to anger—if that’s the case—but that you have grasped that these emotions have little or nothing to do with their objects but arise from the compulsive demands of your nature and your frustrations? That you believe firmly in communism, conservatism, Islam, Europe or whatever—substitute your own beliefs—but that, unlike when you were a rabid youth, you can now see the merits of other beliefs and conceptions, or at least understand how other people can arrive at different conclusions about what is right, good, credible, or even how you came by your own opinions? I could go on.”
“No, no,” said Ron, “I accept your point. We gradually increase our knowledge of ourselves and in doing so, surely, also our knowledge of the others. All that’s generally accepted, isn’t it?”
“Quite so. But the reason I wanted you to admit through your own example that the acquisition of objectivity is progressive is to force you to accept three things: first, that objectivity thus exists and that it is therefore nonsense—excuse me—for you and everyone else to say ‘we’re all subjective’; secondly, that objectivity must necessarily be unequal in men—because it has even been unequal in your own life; and thirdly that, just perhaps, at the end of the road, if ever one were to complete one’s journey, lies absolute objectivity. If one can be objective about one thing, five things, a hundred things, both with regard to oneself and with regard to others, what’s to prevent us from attaining total objectivity, total consciousness, in other words? But forget that last point,” said Victor with a smile. “No one even begins to accept that.”
“All this is quite interesting,” said Ron, who without fuss had taken a small notebook out of his pocket and jotted down half a page of scribbles. “Let me be bold and say that I accept your general hypothesis. But what kind of question, practically, would you ask a man to establish the extent to which he had advanced along your path towards objectivity or not?”
“Off the top of my head, I have no idea. You’ll have to put a man on it,” said Victor. “From what I’ve said, it shouldn’t be difficult. How about another beer?”
“Bloody hell,” said Harry. “I thought no one would ask. I’ll get them”.
Victor and Ron both stared at the table, unsure how to move the conversation on. After a moment or two, Victor resumed as though he had never stopped.
“Did you hear about the discovery of a ‘negativity gene’, as the media hacks call it?”
And without waiting to learn whether Ron had indeed heard of it:
“American psychologists have discovered that individuals who lack, what was it, yes—amino acids—in one of their genes tend strongly to have a more negative outlook on life, to see always the downside of things. Now, if that is so, doesn’t it open up great perspectives in your line of work? Not related to negativity but to our subjective-objective man. Supposing, for example, you subjected a highly objective man and a very subjective one—you can pick them off the street by the cartload—to DNA tests or neurological examination? It might well lead to nothing at all. I guess you guys are already well into neurology. But it’s difficult to find what you’re not looking for, and I guess no one up till now has been seeking the causes or the manifestations of objectivity. I really don’t know what I’m talking about, to tell the truth, but if you ran your subjective and objective brains through some neuroimaging, perhaps something might just show up. Worth a try at least, no?”
Ron looked pleased and clapped Victor on the shoulder. And smiling suggestively:
“How will I find my objective man, though?”
Not liking this sudden physical familiarity but thinking Ron was no fool, Victor said drily: “That’s your problem.”
Ron looked at his watch and said he must be off back to town. As he rose from the table, he asked Victor whether he had shared his “fascinating” views with many other people. What business is that of yours, thought Victor, saying: “No, no, just the two or three persons who will listen to me.”
“Not your Russian woman, for example?” said Ron with a wink, not waiting for a reply and whisking out of the pub.
“Come on, Harry, that was a bit too much,” said Victor when he was out of earshot. “I can forgive you anything, but mentioning my madwoman to him …”
Harry shrugged.
“I thought it might be useful. He’s a bit scared that the other side will get on to your theories before his service has been able to exploit them.”
The Virtues of Self-Hatred
Victor had disliked himself for as long as he could remember. And he knew that he couldn’t blame anyone for the poor opinion he had of himself. Unlike Kafka, one of his favorite writers, who held responsible for his unhappy childhood and life and personal failings a unique collection of individuals—his parents, of course, and a number of relatives, but also a swimming instructor, “slowly walking passers-by,” a ticket inspector, several girls at dancing school, a “particular cook” and a school inspector. It wasn’t Victor’s case. He could find no one whomever to accuse in this way, no one who had something to answer for.
Perhaps all men who are transparent to themselves are condemned to this self antipathy, Victor speculated, even in the absence of evident reasons?
He had always been appreciated, applauded, admired, even loved by those who worked with him and by his friends. He had been showered with praise for his diplomatic skills, his ability to synthesize various opposing positions, his knack for finding impossible compromises between conflicting interests, his rare faculty for identifying the essential issues in any discussion and eliminating the superfluous, his capacity for effacing himself and his personal views in favor of lending an ear and weighing fairly what his interlocutors had to
say. He had been liked not least for his charm, social ease and humor. He was perfectly aware that he possessed all these qualities, but took no pleasure in them and refused all credit for his successes. For him, it was as though he might be congratulated for having black hair or a pointed chin or nicely shaped ears. He was thus, and that was all there was to be said about it.
No one whom he had ever met would believe him when he said that he was impervious to praise and acclamations. Accused of “false modesty” and other hackneyed psychological notions, he had protested but finally fallen silent. What is there to say to people who know better than you what you are and what you think and why you act in this way or that, he had concluded? But the extent of his difference with other people had only gradually dawned on him. An early insight had come when a subordinate who had obviously been drinking at lunch had plucked up the courage to reflect that it would have been nice to hear that the paper he had produced for Victor that morning was “not bad,” or perhaps “pretty good” or, might he be so bold as to suggest, “fucking brilliant”? Victor had just smiled, caught off guard. Surely no one depended on his opinion to judge whether their work was good or bad? Surely their pleasure and happiness didn’t depend on his praise or compliments? He would have to ask Harry.
“They’re absolutely fucking frustrated and miserable, of course,” said Harry with his customary understatement. “They know you’re a clever dick, and they respect you for that. But they’re bloody depressed that you never give them a pat on the back or tell them that they’ve done a great job. They want you to love them and love what they do. They live for it.”
Homo Conscius Page 17